


Maintenance

by HAL_berd



Category: Sdorica (Video Games)
Genre: Chapter 14 got me on some angy shit so instead of finishing it all and publishing, Elio Centric, M/M, Not neglecting archive warnings don't worry, Publishing to remind myself to return after vent writing, slight AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24640714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HAL_berd/pseuds/HAL_berd
Summary: Charle is away on business. Elio waits and discovers the mundanities of plant sitting.
Relationships: Charle Ceres & Elio Ceres, Slight Charle Ceres/Morris Dietrich
Comments: 13
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote all of this before Chapter 14 btw.
> 
> Long story short, this concept was actually the original concept for Fatherhood from that one thing Rune Academy. Then I realized it was too long and split it into Fatherhood (which was basically a prologue) and parts of this. Then I dropped it for a year, picked it back up again, stitched on a few thousand more words, and now Imma just vent write for a bit and put this on hold. Again. Because I'm not a responsible content creator. I am an eldritch creature of impulse and emotion.
> 
> Anyways, thank you to both my wonderful beta ([Vagorsol](https://twitter.com/vagorsol)) and my darling sounding board ([Kilydwn](https://twitter.com/kilydwn)) for keeping me sane during this project.

_Elio. Away on business. Please take care of my orchid. Additional information in my quarters. Key attached._ _Charle._

Elio is a bit miffed. The Headmaster is in and out of the Academy for the better part of a year, locks himself into his quarters for a week, and then takes off without a trace, and _this_ is how he finds out?

_(Without even a goodbye.)_

So Elio makes his way up the now unfamiliar path to the staff living quarters. At the Headmaster's address, he fishes the key out of his pocket, unlocks the door, and sidles into the stale air of Charle's living room.

It's a disaster.

Parchment is pinned to every wall, with diagrams and the Headmaster's careless script scrawled over every inch of the stuff. Experimental setups lay abandoned on the carpet. Elio catches a whiff of old soul energy, and he notices the traces of a compacting array amidst a heap of clothing and tools—evidence of a hasty packing.

Elio sighs and picks his way across the chaos of the floor. How's he supposed to find the orchid in this mess? Not to mention the message, which is probably written on the exact same type of parchment that now covers most all of the room. He pauses and scans the living quarters.

There, sitting on the sill of a window (presumably a window; it's patched over in calculations), is a pathetic little orchid plant, white and pink blooms drooping under the weight of a diagram resting on its stem. Elio rescues it from its burden and clears off the dining table to give it a decent place to sit. It's a wonder the thing is still alive, but then again, it's been here for as long as he can remember. He figures there's something special about it.

There's a note addressed to Elio attached to the pot, but for all of its cryptic explanations, it says nothing about orchids. He tiptoes around parchment to the Headmaster's study with the intentions of finding a manual on caring for the thing, but even the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves of the study are covered in papers. 

Elio throws his hands up in exasperation and goes to the library.

Two indexes on botany later, he's back in the Headmaster's quarters shifting the orchid into a better spot on the dining table for indirect sunlight. He's learned it's normally best to water in the mornings, but the soil is so dry right now. He picks his way over to the kitchen sink (not even the kitchen is spared from the parchment, unfortunately) and gives the plant a conservative sprinkling.

By the end of this little adventure, Elio realizes how heavy his limbs are with exhaustion. It's late. He has a lecture at dawn, and he begins to shy away from the prospect of trudging two kilometres to the student dorms. Then he figures his old room in the Headmaster's quarters is probably covered in papers anyways. So, he locks the door on the way out. For a brief and terrifyingly irresponsible moment, he considers throwing caution to the wind and _flying_ there, but the moment passes.

He walks back to his dorm. 

* * *

_Elio,_

_I apologize for the short notice and added responsibility. My assistance is needed on an important project in the capital, and I am certain you can gather from the state of my walls and floor exactly how urgent this project is. Again, my apologies. I will make it up to you upon my return._

_As for the nature of my project, I admit to a certain measure of...danger. Should I not return from my excursion, I have left the pertinent documents in the second drawer from the top on the right side of my desk (in my personal study, not my office). In all likelihood, I shall not be absent for much longer than a month, and if complications arise, I shall contact Barbara with further information. Do not worry about me._

_Thank you._

_Charle_

_P.S. Please don't dig into the papers on the walls._

* * *

The next day, Elio finishes cleaning his lab space just a touch early and heads up the still unfamiliar road to the Headmaster's quarters, where he begins the process of gingerly peeling paper from the windows. One by one, sketched diagrams of the Kingdom, maps of Vendacti, and charts of data come fluttering off the glass until sunlight can finally filter through. Elio puts the translucent curtains down so that the orchid doesn't shrivel up.

In all honesty, he wouldn't have thought to look through the diagrams had the Headmaster not mentioned it, but the warning piques the smallest bit of curiosity in him. He glances at a diagram of a plain sphere with numbers marked around its circumference. Elio can just make out a structure with massive arrays carved into its side, encircling the sphere.

The rest is in writing, and he understands the Headmaster's cryptic shorthand even less than he understands Applied Magic circles, so it's only through the arrays themselves that he discerns the device's function. Elio's almost sure it's an energy concentration structure, but he can't be certain that's all it is without reading the notation.

He strains his eyes trying to make out what the writing could possibly mean. It doesn't take much for him to give up though. Even when the man makes an effort to clean up his script for the general populace, his chicken scratch is just barely legible. This? The Headmaster's manic notes to himself? Elio doesn't stand a chance.

He organizes these few papers into a neat stack and locks the door on the way out.

* * *

Orchids don't like to be watered too often, so the next day, Elio doesn't go to the Headmaster's quarters. 

He goes to his quiet place instead.

Professor Dietrich's Life Magic lab is on the outskirts of the Applied Magic wing, the pathway to its simple wooden door tucked perfectly behind a stack of charred debris. Elio knows the cobble road there like the back of his hand, and with each step, he leaves behind a little piece of his worries. 

"Sorry for the intrusion, Professor," he says as he pushes the door open. Nobody answers, of course; nobody's there. But in the presence of his soul energy, all of the automatic procedures Professor Dietrich had left carved into the room begin to kick in. Rune lights flicker on. The journal he'd begun reading a week ago flips open to the page he'd bookmarked.

It's like being welcomed home.

Sometimes, Elio wishes he could've met the man. Professor Dietrich is stately and insightful in his writing, and genius oozes out of every single array that Elio manages to decipher. Heck, even his signature is an array, every instance of it different in some subtle way that Elio couldn't understand until he realized they were creating a _sorting index_. 

_High level soul energy gathering in array, efficient spacing,_ Elio thinks, fingers wrapped around a charm on the central desk. 

Green tendrils of soul energy shoot out from his fist and attach like strings to various tomes and journals on the oaken shelves. Elio traces one glowing tendril to a leather-bound volume nearby and eases it out, blowing the dust off its spine. With that, he settles in for a calm evening.

Later that night, as Elio crawls into the beat-up bed in the loft, the lights dim with the calming of his soul energy like the spirit of Morris Dietrich easing him to sleep. 

* * *

He doesn't return to the Headmaster's quarters until the next week, when, given the dryness typical of the season, the orchid would need watering. After losing Annie, Betty, and Cara somewhere around the third corner, and after catching himself subconsciously wandering towards his quiet place, Elio finally begins the long journey to the staff living quarters.

He turns the key over in his hands as he walks. It's a large, unwieldy thing, the shaft and ring made of thick, polished silver while the teeth are forged from brass with a matte finish. Elio can feel little imperfections etched into the metal, a mess of shallow dents and scratches in the surface. It doesn't surprise him. The Headmaster is in the habit of dropping things rather carelessly.

He waters the orchid. He makes one more token effort to decipher the Headmaster's shorthand. He trips over a tool. Twice.

Elio sighs and locks the door on the way out. He hopes the Headmaster comes back sooner rather than later.

* * *

It's not until the week after that it occurs to Elio. He could just take the orchid to his dorm with him and spare himself the lengthy trek to and from the staff living quarters. But when he has the potted plant up in his arms, when he's halfway out the door, he just can't make the final step.

The orchid has been here for ages, he realizes. In the corner of his memory. It was there when he used to live with his father. It was there when he signed his student contract. It was there when he left the Headmaster's quarters for the student dorms. 

He puts the orchid back down on the dining table.

 _Maybe it'll be less tiring if I don't have to play hopscotch everywhere I go,_ he thinks.

So, after giving the orchid a little splash of water, Elio begins to pick tools and parchment off the carpet. Here, an energy spectrometer. There, a tome on the mythological flora of Whistlewood Valley. He stacks the loose items against the edges of the room, safely out of the way, and then finally takes a seat on the cleared sofa to survey his efforts. The walls...the walls are still plastered in work, but at least he can walk from here to the door without risking a trip to the infirmary.

He stretches out his arms and leans back against the back of the beat up couch. 

It's old. Not as old as the orchid, but it's definitely been here since Elio was young. He remembers carrying the seat cushions and the pillows into his father's study to fashion his own plush desk to read at, to which his father had responded by chuckling and floating a couple rune lights closer to his make-believe work space.

A different time, Elio reflects. The image of the man looking at him from behind the old mahogany desk with unabashedly warm and affectionate eyes, unhampered by the cold weight of the Headmaster's robes. It's solid and clear, yet distant. Unreachable. 

Later that night, he locks the door as he trudges, exhausted, out of the quarters.

* * *

"Sorry for the intrusion, Professor."

Rune lights on. Books open.

Today, it's a journey through one of Professor Dietrich's papers from graduate school: _A Treatise On Prolonged Stasis Array Biosuspension of Plant Based Life_ , chosen due to Elio's current occupation with a certain orchid. He thumbs through the man's personal copy of the first draft, tracing the Professor's incredible feats of lateral thinking and trying simultaneously to glean just one more fragment of his character from the notes scribbled in the margins. He catches ghosts of the man's dry wit in his responses to his advisory committee's feedback. He squirrels out just the barest hints of compassion in a note on how the standard procedure for putting down a failed soul experiment could be improved, made more painless, more instant, or perhaps even made to be regenerative. 

Mentally, he tacks these details onto the growing expanse of words that make up Morris Dietrich.

Paper and arrays, in the vague shape of a man.

Somewhere in all of the reading, Elio makes it to the creaky old bed in the loft and falls asleep with leaflets of the Professor's writing falling over his chest like a blanket.

* * *

_It's been a month,_ Elio realizes, sitting at the dining table in the Headmaster's quarters, having finished giving the orchid and its now glowing white and pink blossoms the weekly sprinkle. _He'll be back soon._

And once the Headmaster's back, this saga will end. No more setting aside entire evenings to water a plant. No more weekly journeys clear across the campus. No more trekking down the now painfully nostalgic path to the staff living quarters. And no more papered over living room with the sofa from his childhood memories. A short saga, but a strange one. 

(And the Headmaster will be back.)

Elio's eyes rest on the parchment-covered walls. He never did decipher them, but he's spent so much time gazing idly, agonizing over dead mothers and royal fathers, that he has the arrangement of the papers nearly memorized from the diagrams alone. He considers taking them down so that the Headmaster can return to clean walls, but perhaps he still has work to do with them.

 _If he asks for help with it, I'll help,_ Elio resolves. _After he comes back._

He locks the door on the way out.

* * *

(The Headmaster doesn't come back that week.)

(Or the week after.)

* * *

"Professor Balzac," Elio says after class, "May I...speak with you?"

She huffs.

"Only if you can walk at the same time," she says. "I have places to be."

So he follows her out the door of the lecture hall, tripping over himself a little to keep pace with her purposeful gait.

"What is it?" she asks.

"Professor, have you heard from the Headmaster lately?" Elio asks.

"No," she says. "Ceres left me a notice stating that in the event that he could not return in time, he would be in contact within the month. I have received nothing. Besides an unacceptable abundance of overtime, of course."

Elio mind blanks.

"...Nothing?"

"If I said I received nothing, then I received nothing."

"Of course. Sorry."

They reach the heavy double doors of the Headmaster's Office, and Professor Balzac waves them open with a hand. Elio follows her in.

"Still here?"

"Ah...sorry," Elio says sheepishly. "I just..."

_A certain measure of...danger._

Elio knows the man has a habit of understating.

Professor Balzac sighs and puts her things down on the Headmaster's desk.

"Look, your father's a clumsy man. He's only two weeks overdue, and the roads get a little bit iffy during the warmer seasons," she says. "I'm sure communications have just slipped his mind, or he got sidetracked by some humanitarian effort along the way, okay? I wouldn't worry about him."

Elio breathes.

Right.

The Headmaster is a capable man. He'll be back.

* * *

(Elio points at the potted plants beside the desk.

"So he's making you plant sit too?"

Professor Balzac snorts.

"Those are fake. That man has a black thumb—can't keep anything alive for more than a week.")

* * *

One and three quarters months. Elio paces around the orchid.

The leaves have begun to shrivel and the white and pink blooms are drooping, and Elio cannot fathom why. He hasn't been overwatering the thing. He fed it last month. He's kept it out of direct sunlight and in the proper climate. What could possibly be going wrong? He brings a stack of books on botany from the library to try and figure things out, but a solid four hours of reading later, he's still scratching his head.

His working hypothesis is a bacterial infection, so, after checking over the pot itself to make sure he isn't discarding any valuable life-preservation arrays, he uproots the plant from the dirt it's been in for longer than Elio's been alive. The shriveled leaves are just shriveling, not infected. The roots don't show any signs of rotting either. Elio sighs and changes out the soil anyways. Hopefully that'll fix it. If it doesn't, Elio will start digging into whatever sorcery has been keeping it alive under the Headmaster's "care." 

It won't come to that though; the Headmaster will probably know how to fix this mess once he comes back.

( _I_ _f_ he comes back.)

* * *

A week passes. The orchid continues to wilt.

* * *

"Sorry for the intrusion, Professor."

Elio has a purpose as he sweeps into his quiet place today. He takes the charm from the central desk in hand.

 _Orchids,_ he thinks.

It seems almost desperate, hoping that the lab will somehow have answers for his very specific problem, but asking Professor Dietrich for advice has worked time and time again. Anything from self scheduling to advice on how to deal with rumors; the man was a habitual diarist.

Sure enough, the room lights up with green connections.

Elio follows one to a bound collection of journal entries. It's a variation of the Professor's graduate work on the biosuspension of plant life, and orchids are the subject. Well, the Headmaster's plant is definitely much older than it ought to be, and he can't figure out any natural causes for its wilting. Elio gives it a shot.

* * *

The next day, Elio brings the journal to the headmaster's quarters after his final lecture and opens it up to the page depicting the biosuspension array.

Infusing the orchid with a little bit of soul energy is enough to display the spell cast on it. Elio, having studied Professor Dietrich's work on the subject until he passed out, begins to dutifully compare the two.

They're almost identical, he finds. Save for one little detour.

There's a break in the orchid's array that connects to a pair of rune circles. The first of these circles contains the standard system for soul energy gathering, of course, but it calls for an active infusion. In other words, whatever happens in this circle relies on having a soul nearby that excites the latent soul energy of the environment. Simple enough.

However, that same circle has a clause in it. Elio recognizes a rune for "detection" in it, and the rest is composed of symbols that he can't read, but he can identify in them characteristics indicative of Neuro-runology: a very narrow field that he hasn't so much as touched.

The second of these circles is filled exclusively with these unfamiliar runes.

Whatever is killing the orchid has to do with these detours. According to Professor Dietrich's research, the original biosuspension array should keep an orchid like this hale and hearty indefinitely, so these extraneous arrays attaching active infusion and Neuro-runology to the biosuspension are the only culprits. So, Elio pulls out his feather and works towards severing that connection.

The tips of the orchid's leaves immediately begin to blacken.

Alarmed, Elio hastily reestablishes the link between the circles and resolves not to touch them again until he fully understands their function.

* * *

He can't wrap his head around Neuro-runology. He just can't.

Elio flips a few pages back to try and understand what Professor Dietrich is positing in his work here, but it just won't get through his skull. The written explanations of energy gathering, he can understand. Even some of the Professor's most complicated arrays he can pull off without a hitch. But this? This one branch of Life Magic that Professor Dietrich had dabbled in and effortlessly mastered?

The reading just won't stick. And it's not like the paper pile of assumptions about the Professor in Elio's head can explain things to him.

 _The Headmaster's going to come back and I'll have killed his orchid,_ Elio realizes.

_(Or he won't, and I'll have failed his final request.)_

Elio sighs. No.

That night, he falls into a fitful sleep in the loft.

* * *

The next time he goes to water the orchid, it's doing much worse, and no amount of staring at the circles clears his inability to comprehend Neuro-runology. So he resolves to distract himself by cleaning up the walls.

If the Headmaster is taking so long on this project, it better be done when he gets back, Elio reasons. Besides, in a way, he's paying for the orchid with his labor.

He starts with the living room. He carefully peels layers of parchment off of the sturdy wooden walls, organizing them into stacks based on where they once were. It takes a few hours, but by the end of the night, Elio can survey the room from the sofa without papers assaulting his vision. It's good progress.

He does a walk through of the rest of the Headmaster's quarters to plot out what his target will be next week. Most likely, he'll tackle the study next, since it's the next largest room in the quarters. Then, the Headmaster's bedroom and the restroom. Then, the kitchen, and it's here that he realizes that he hasn't even assessed his own bedroom. Elio can only imagine his old childhood bed covered in diagrams. That would be a sight. In fact, he's anticipating it as he grips the old brass knob and swings the door open.

Except there are no diagrams. There isn't even the old childhood bed.

The walls and ceiling are covered in nothing but the stars his father had pasted on years ago. The tiny bed is gone, replaced by something a little bigger and softer than your standard student bunk. A desk, simple yet sturdy, sits pushed up against the wall right next to a bookshelf brimming with tomes on various Life Magic subjects.

_When...?_

_Why?_

A faded, dusty note, penned in the man's best handwriting, sits abandoned on the desk:

_Elio,_

_Happy Holidays!_

_Love,_

_Charle_

Right. His father had invited him to stay here last holiday season. Elio, preoccupied with his studies and extra reading into the feather tribe, had declined.

He picks up the note and carries it over to the bed, where he sits. And stares.

Warmth, in the pit of his stomach.

A hot iron weight that sinks slowly into his gut, and he can't do anything but clutch the note to his chest. What had he gained from declining that offer?

He curls up in the unused bed, feeling the heat spread from his gut, to his heart, to his eyes.

He spends the night in his old room.

* * *

The next morning, as he opens the curtains to give the orchid a taste of morning sun, he notices the shriveling has slowed, and the stem wavers in a room with no wind.

* * *

Two and a half months. Elio is cleaning up the study when he notices, behind the parchment of a map of Atlas, a worn journal with his name on the spine. Curiosity piqued, he eases it out of the shelf and blows the dust off of its cover before flipping it open.

 _Year 181: DAF Thermo Phase One,_ ~~_SORDD Final Phase_~~ _,_ _and Elio_

It feels a bit invasive. Elio doesn't think he could look his father in the eye once he returns if he delves too deep, so he just flips through, too quickly to absorb anything really. But a page filled with strokes that break the pattern of indecipherable shorthand catches his eye.

He flips back to it. It's a messy sketch of a small baby crawling on all fours, eyes wide, little lips pursed in a burble, labeled, _Ms. Fournier, your child is a blessing_.

 _Me,_ Elio realizes. He hadn't known his father was an artist, but the likeness to an actual child with just a few simple strokes is astounding.

He flips through the last half of the journal and finds another sketch of himself as a baby, mouth open in a joyful shout. Labeled, _"Baba"—what a predicament_.

There isn't another sketch in this journal, but he can't stop now, so he pulls the next one from the shelf.

_Year 182: DAF Thermo Phases Two and Three, Construction of Berik's Wing, SORDD (Actual) Final Phase, and More Elio_

Within the first few pages, there's an unlabeled sketch of baby Elio with his budding teeth clamped on the ring of a thick metal key. Elio pulls the scratched and dented key to his father's quarters out of his pocket, places it side by side with the sketch, and draws a shaky breath before moving on.

It's mostly just his father's broken shorthand and chicken scratch, but then, on the final page: a sketched and inked piece depicting a larger Elio with his arms stretched out in front of him, toddling about on cobble that he recognizes as the Academy's main walkway.

Labeled, _Elio Ceres. My son._

Elio puts both journals back on the shelf, overwhelmed.

The shriveling slows just a little bit more, and the orchid sways on the table.

* * *

It all comes crashing down at the dawn of the third month, when Elio is finishing up cleaning the study, and he opens the second drawer from the top on the right side of the desk.

A set of papers, the "pertinent documents" in the event Charle does not return:

_I, Charle Ceres, being of sound and disposing mind, do hereby make, publish, and declare the following to be my Last Will and Testament—_

_—my Last Will and Testament—_

_—my Last Will and—_

Elio slams the drawer shut.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a storm brews

"Professor!" Elio says as he stumbles, panting, past the heavy double doors of the Headmaster's Office. He's just run straight from his father's quarters. "Professor Balzac, please, have you received anything from my father?"

Professor Balzac has her head in her hands, papers scattered around the desk at her elbows. She does not respond.

"Professor?" Elio prods again, trying to school his shaky voice into a softer, more polite tone. The woman sighs.

"No, Elio." Her eyes are lined with heavy bags. "I have not. No letters. No mentions. Just more overtime and grant requests that I don't have the authority to sign for. He's _never done_ this before. Not even as airheaded as he is..."

Elio is rendered speechless while the woman clenches her fists against some diplomatic documents. 

"Elio, do you know anything about where your father could have possibly gone?" she asks. "I need a lead. Something. _Anything._ Or I'll be forced to take action for the good of the Academy."

_For the good of the Academy._

"He—"

Elio's voice cracks. He's still short of breath.

"...He left me a note," he says. "The only thing he said about his mission was that it was important and dangerous."

"How dangerous? Where?"

"I don't...I don't know. He said 'a certain measure of danger,' and that's it."

Professor Balzac releases a long, hissing breath and mutters, " _Dammit_ Charle _._ Of _all the times to be vague._ You prance off to who knows where and leave the Academy in my hands in _this state._ "

Elio takes a step back. He can feel the anger and frustration rolling off of her in waves, and all he can think is, _Why is she so mad about work when he could be_ **_dead_ ** _?_

He doesn't know why he says it. Maybe it's a test. Maybe it's for shock. Maybe he's just so tired and scared that he doesn't care, but either way, he's looking straight at the Professor, propriety be damned, as he speaks:

"He left me his will."

Elio's voice wavers on the last word.

Professor Balzac goes silent.

"E-Excuse me," he says.

Elio dashes out of the room.

* * *

(The soft _thunk_ of a fist against wood.

"Charle, you bastard. You _fool._ You come back alive. You'd better come back alive, I swear...")

* * *

The papers. He's good at papers. Elio knows that he can find his father in the papers somewhere. He has to.

_(Unless he's already—)_

_No._ He runs through the exhaustion in his legs, down the now painfully familiar path to the staff living quarters, past the door he forgot to lock on the way out, and falls to his knees at the stacks of parchment he'd plucked off the walls. He leafs through them manically, but it all seems so disjointed.

He remembers where they were.

_He remembers where they were._

He begins to reassemble his father's plan, pinning fragments of ideas together until the diagrams match vaguely with the pattern in his memory. And then he steps back. Stares.

It's like the last month never happened. Calculations and data patch over the walls. Over the floor. Over the sofa from his childhood.

Elio settles in.

He tries to begin deciphering his father's shorthand but the long day gets to him, and soon enough, he passes out on the floor, cushioned only by fragile layers of parchment.

* * *

(And through it all, through it all, the orchid, now rapidly browning, begins to droop on the table.)

* * *

The diagrams and maps don't speak without the writing. Too many places are circled, too many locations depicted to get an accurate read on where his father could've gone without the accompanying text.

_(What use is it—)_

Elio's brought in tomes from the library on standard forms of shorthand, but his father must have made something up himself, because the tomes don't help. Nothing helps.

_(What use is it if he's already—)_

From frequency and placement alone, Elio thinks he may have figured out his father's symbols for "the," and "and," and "to," and "of," and, just by the nature of the writing, "because." But there's a whole host of jargon in between, and coded proper nouns, and the _places_ are what matter really. Elio needs to find _where_ he's gone.

_(He's probably already—)_

A map. Elio needs one. There's a hastily scribbled map on a piece of parchment near the window, he remembers. Elio hops with practiced ease over the chaos he's spread on the ground and plucks it off the wall.

He thanks his lucky stars that the man was— _is_ a good artist. The main landmarks are recognizable, and labeled. In shorthand. Atlas is a dipping loop. Whistlewood is a high scribble. The Kingdom is a circular symbol vaguely in the shape of a sun, the capital a triangular figure pointing to a castle. 

It's progress. It's good progress.

 _(But it_ **_doesn't matter._ ** _)_

He needs something solid. Not calculations. Not diagrams. He needs a summarization. Some sort of statement of intentions.

 _The journals,_ he realizes.

He hops down the small hallway into his father's study, where the shelves are still clear of papers, and finds the collection of journals almost immediately. He traces over the spines, searching for the year.

_197, 198, 199..._

200 is missing.

_Of course it's missing._

The year isn't over yet; this journal is still being written. It's probably unlabeled and untitled, and from how frequently his father seems to have made entries in these things, Elio deduces that it must be easily accessible, close to a quill and inkwell.

The desk then. Elio's searching the desk, sweeping the top of it, where a small volume like that could easily hide beneath the contracts and to-be-graded papers scattered on the surface, and checking the drawers, skipping carefully over the second from the top on the right side—

_(I'll need it soon; the Academy will need that document soon—)_

There. In a small drawer on the left, atop a box of spare quills. A plain blue journal in the style of those written before, the spine and cover yet to be marked.

Page one, penned as neatly as can be said of his father's handwriting: _1 Ice, 200._

He flips to the latest entry. It's just a scant few lines, written in shorthand interspersed with some hastily scribbled words. Elio brings it to the living room, to where he's kept everything he's figured out so far, and starts on the first symbol, which he doesn't know. But he finds it familiar. He thumbs through the other entries, and the symbol appears fairly frequently, and this is a private journal, probably in the first person. The safe assumption is "I."

The rest of the sentence turns out to be unreadable besides a singular "to." The sentence following though, has the presumed "I" as the second character, followed by two unfamiliar symbols, followed by shorthand "the" and a triangular figure. Elio pulls up the map. Yes, that's "capital" or "castle," or something of the like.

"I" and "the capital," and a string of unfamiliar symbols with the occasional shorthand for "the" and "and" here and there. Then, a pair of words with a "the" in between. Phrases his father must've used so infrequently that they didn't merit shorthand: "destroy" and "weapon."

"I," "the capital," "destroy the weapon," and then at the bottom of the page...

A sinking feeling in his gut.

"Treason."

_I'll need it soon; the Academy will need that document soon._

Because his father is probably already dead.

* * *

The notice has been on the board for close to a week, and from the date marked two months ago in the top left corner, it's been on the road for much longer. The castle, lifting from its place in the capital. A massive laser lighting up Atlas on the horizon. A crash. Casualties unknown. Theodore returned, Princess Angelia branded a traitor. At the time the notice was written, investigations into possible co-conspirators had just begun, and Elio has no doubt that the resultant executions have already occurred.

"I," "the capital," "destroy the weapon."

Treason.

_A laser lighting up Atlas on the horizon._

_A crash._

And then? _What then?_ Something went catastrophically wrong with his father's plan, and Elio doesn't even know if he met the gallows or the guillotine because all the Academy has to show for it is this outdated piece of paper.

This _stupid_ _,_ _flimsy_ piece of paper.

In a frustrated passion, Elio rips the notice from the board. He tears it into halves. Then quarters. Then eighths. On and on, until it's just a pile of scraps. Little bits and tatters that nobody, not even him, could possibly piece back together.

It's dark by the time he's stumbled back to the staff living quarters. He collapses into his bed and hopes against all hope that his morbid mind won't conjure images of Charle's head rolling at the feet of Elio's blood father.

* * *

(As he succumbs to his dark and fitful sleep, the orchid weeps wilted petals onto the table.)

* * *

Elio navigates the back alleys of the Academy, trying desperately to avoid the attention of any passing students or teachers. He can't take class today. He can't take the jeers. He can't take his admirers' concern. All he wants, all he _needs_ right now is his quiet place. To leave all of this turmoil at the door and bury himself in books.

It almost works. He takes a deep breath at the door, he mutters "Sorry for the intrusion, Professor" with only a single waver in his voice, and his fingers just manage to wrap around the charm before the trembling forces him to drop it.

Because he can't leave this turmoil at the door. He can't. It's too raw; it's too hot in his throat, and it suffocates all of his other thoughts as he clutches his hands against his chest and leans against the old wood of the central desk.

_(Love, Charle.)_

_What had he gained from declining that offer?_

He can't.

_(An unlabeled sketch of baby Elio with his budding teeth clamped on the ring of a thick metal key.)_

_The Headmaster is in the habit of dropping things rather carelessly._

He can't.

_(Elio Ceres.)_

_(My son.)_

He can't. He can't. He can't.

_(My Last Will and Testament.)_

The rune lights that light up upon his entrance begin to flicker harshly with the agitation of his soul energy. The books that automatically open to the places he bookmarks begin to rifle through their pages in the chaos, and Elio wishes it could all just stop, just _stop._ But it can't. Because these are just paper and arrays marked into the lab, and paper and arrays can't place a warm hand on his shoulder and say they're proud, can't covertly slip allowances of curren under the door of his student dorm, can't pull him into their arms after a rough dream. Because they're just that. Paper and arrays.

Flimsy.

Uncaring.

Not _people._

It rises in him like a wave in a storm: a deep and irrational anger. It chokes out his trembling as he pulls himself to his feet with the rune lights whining to a livid, blinding white, as he marches out of the lab with a slam of the door, as he stomps onto the walkway towards the staff living quarters, ignoring the calls of peers and professors along the way. Secrecy be damned. Politeness be damned. Elio is on the warpath.

He finds his father's door, sweeps into the stale air of the quarters, and locks the door on the way in.

And in this moment, he becomes a disaster.

He rips parchment with diagrams and his father's careless script scrawled over every inch of it right off the walls, tearing them from the pins and crumpling them up and throwing them onto the carpet right next to abandoned experimental setups. He crushes calculations indiscriminately underfoot as he storms through the quarters and wrenches paper after paper off the foundations of each room, mangling them into a mass of balled-up rage in his fists as he dumps them onto the floor of the living room because _how dare they._

How _dare_ these stupid _goddamn_ _pieces of paper._

What _worth_ could that mission have? What _right_ could these stupid _goddamn_ plans have? How could _anything_ be _worth_ it?

How could _anything_ be worth taking his father away.

It was his mother first.

Then his blood father, just by the nature of his ignorance.

And now this.

Now his real father.

Taken away by a mission and these plans and a million pieces of _fucking_ paper.

The flash of light revealing his wings is brief and terrifyingly cathartic, but it doesn't compare to the satisfaction of raising his clenched fist to the pile of parchment on the carpet and focusing every drop of blood in his veins, every ounce of anger burning in his body, towards smiting the thing. Bombarding it with soul energy until the tattered remains catch fire.

His breathing is heavy. His wings shake in fury.

The quarters smell of smoke, and the heat rages over his skin, great tongues of flame hissing out of the charred mass, red hot sparks snapping in the air to a body of black and billowing smoke. It's hungry for more.

There's more.

_There's one more._

He drags his body to his father's office, his wings bashing and scraping painfully against the frame of the door as he forces himself through. He stumbles into the corner of the desk. He fumbles open the drawer second from the top on the right side and takes the documents from within and he's halfway out the door, the will in hand, but then, right then, he just can't make the final step.

Because his eyes begin to catch on snatches of his father's best penmanship.

_I, Charle Ceres, being of sound and disposing mind—_

_—my Last Will and Testament—_

_My position and all of its authority_ _shall go to Barbara Balzac—_

_—My good chess set shall go to General Fredrica Lucien of the Kingdom of Sun—_

_—Owl Boy shall go to Tica Chevalier. As she won't stop pestering me—_

_—donation split evenly between the Life and Applied schools of the Academy, to be organized into a scholarship—_

_—and to Elio, my son—_

_—my son—_

_—to Elio, my son, I leave—_

_—I leave to you the remaining seventy percent of my earnings, my quarters, my journals,_

_my orchid,_

_and finally, but perhaps most importantly,_

_—perhaps most importantly—_

_my deepest affections._

_I hope you might forgive me my insufficiencies in communication—_

_—every day I see you take another step in the long and treacherous road towards adulthood, and I know, every day, my son—_

_—my son—_

_You are my greatest pride and joy._

_Love,_

_—Love—_

_Your Father,_

_Charle_

* * *

The will doesn't go into the flames. Elio places it shakily back on the desk, shuffles out into the smoke-filled hallways, and suffocates the spreading fire in the living room with a wavering array.

The living room is blackened. The sofa he would fashion into a make-believe desk as a child is scorched on the front, blotting out the color of the cushions. And the orchid.

The orchid is dead.

Its illness has evolved into an ugly and debilitating rot. The leaves are shriveled skeletons. The blossoms have long since dried and wilted off the brown, drooping stem, and whatever might have still been green is covered in a thin layer of cinders.

Elio surveys the destruction. The burnt floor and walls. The pile of gray dust that was once his father's work.

_You are my greatest pride and joy._

Elio's fists try to tighten at his side, but he's too weak.

His wings fade.

_...Why did you go?_

He walks up to the sofa. His knees fold, and suddenly he's collapsed into the charred fabric. Boneless.

_(Without even a goodbye.)_

Ashes on the floor. Ashes on the sofa and on Elio. Darkening like wet sand in the tracks of his tears and scratching at his sore and burned throat.

_I leave to you—_

Ashes scattered across the ruined quarters.

Ashes dusted on the pages of the abandoned journal.

Ashes, sitting like a heaping gray weight on the orchid's bow-necked stem.

_—my deepest affections._

"...Why couldn't you just say goodbye?"

The empty room offers no response.

Lying in the wake of the storm, he can just barely manage a choked sob into the sofa cushions before falling into a deep and dreamless sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sifting through the dust
> 
> (something is growing)

Elio awakens slowly.

His eyes feel crusty and sore, the lids heavy. He can just make out the blurriest tint of half light before he blinks away the grime.

It's early.

Dull sunlight filters in through the translucent curtains across from his place on the sofa. Thin beams catch on particulates of ruined parchment fluttering in the burnt air of his father's living room before landing on the carpet. The blackened carpet that meets wooden walls decorated with spent rune patterns.

It's a miracle, he realizes numbly, that the entire place hadn't burned down.

He shifts on the cushions, and they crumble a little beneath him. He tries to sigh but out puffs a little cloud of ash dust from behind his lips that makes him hack and cough, his struggles kicking up gray from the floor beneath. It's all over him; on, in, and around. Plastered over his skin with sweat, a thin powdering of it on the surface of his clothes, caked on the inside of his mouth and throat. He hauls his dead weight body into a sitting position, and his palms come away from the cushions gray with ash that won't come off.

He stares at his ash-covered hands.

He stares at them blankly until the smell of old smoke becomes too much for his aching lungs. He sighs, hacks, coughs (Were those black spots in his vision?), brushes his hands off futilely once again, before finally pushing off against the crumbling sofa cushions and stumbling to his feet.

Slowly, slowly, he takes unsteady steps to the window and eases the curtains to either side. He fumbles along the seam of the two wood-framed glass panels until the window swings open.

The Academy's shimmering mirage barrier is sluggish in the pre-dawn light. But the air, the cold, fresh air, clear of ash and smoke, shocks his scorched lungs, makes him hack and cough and heave, so that he’s well and truly awake.

He turns his gaze back towards the wreckage, his stinging eyes catching on tatters of ruined work and dust piled onto what isn't burnt or broken.

It's a mess. It's a murder. In a way, his father is twice dead, and he almost apologizes if not for the deafening silence of the room.

Instead, Elio drags himself over to the restroom, where he uses water and magic to scrub his skin, mouth, and throat, and then he breathes (and hacks, and coughs, because there’s still ash in his lungs but it’d take too much time and magic to fix). He glances in the mirror. Takes in the image of his father’s son utterly spent, clothing marked with the entrails of the man’s work.

He sighs (hacks, coughs, his throat rattles). Collects himself.

And, in lieu of apology, begins to clean.

* * *

It takes a good four hours to get a majority of the ashes off the floor, and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t sweep up the portion that’s settled into the charred remains of the carpet he’ll probably have to pull up later. The soot on the wooden walls is stubborn and pervasive. The stains remain even after a pass through with a cloth soaked in diluted cleaning fluid.

It’s just a series of temporary fixes and half measures, but he already knows. The ash will stay in the cracks of the wood. The smell of soot and smoke will haunt the panels of the walls forever. The room will never be the same.

He drops his bucket, the ruined cloth floating across the top of the sluggish fluid within, and sighs (hacks, coughs, it hurts). He doesn’t have it in him to release his frustration. He doesn’t have it in him to cry. 

_I leave to you—_

He abandons the carpet and the walls. Picks up the journal from his father’s office he’d left open on the dining table. He works on that instead.

It’s okay. Fortunately, it’s okay. He just needs to brush a thin powdering of ash off the open pages and it’s fine, except it isn’t really, because he can see the half-scorched tint of brown on the edges of each sheet. He drops the volume back onto the table.

The orchid then? Nothing is more pitiful a reminder of what he’s done.

The orchid is dead. It has to be. It can’t get any more dead than it is now: shriveled and gray, stem inanimate, soil dusted over with soot. 

_Please take care of my orchid._

It’s been here for as long as he can remember. Through lengthy story sessions. Through hours of watching his father balance cookbooks on his arm to make something even remotely edible. It’s been here long enough to watch his father’s eyes dim at the signed student contract with an uttered _Elio, are you sure?_ Long enough to hear the _Yes, Headmaster._

And now it’s dead.

Elio brushes over the remnants of the thing to clear off the ash. The stem crumbles between his fingers.

He breathes (hacks, coughs, everything goes a little dark for a moment). Cradles what little orchid dust hasn’t slipped out of his hands.

_I leave to you—_

It’ll never be the same.

He almost apologizes again, but the words are stuck in the ash in his lungs because there’s nobody to apologize _to._ His father is _dead,_ the room is _dead,_ the orchid is _dead._

It’ll _never_ be the same.

  
  
  


Elio’s drooping eyes catch on something in the soil.

It’s bright against the gray and black of the soot. A spring green light emitting from the spell cast on the plant.

A circle of runes...around...an M.

Elio snatches up the dead plant and makes for the door.

* * *

He marches into his quiet place without a word. It’s just like he left it.

(He wonders for a brief second if he might have burnt this place down too in his rage last night, if nothing had stopped him, if nothing had snapped him out of it.)

He shakes his head, breathes (hacks, coughs), and searches for the charm on the central desk until he remembers he’d dropped it on the floor. He picks it up and focuses, forces all that he can into picturing the exact array he saw glowing out of the soil.

Elio opens his eyes.

A single strand of green energy trails out the door from his fist. Elio adjusts his grip on the orchid pot and begins to follow it, out of the Applied Magic wing, along the main walkway, down the achingly familiar road back to the staff living quarters, until he’s standing by the doorway of his father’s study again, where the ash and soot don’t reach, and the thread attaches to a box on the bookshelves.

Elio sets the orchid pot down on the desk and breathes (hacks, coughs) before pulling the box out from the shelf and cracking the worn leather top open. The inside of the lid has a brief instruction manual penned in his father’s best handwriting, with “Happy Birthday Morris — Charle” scrawled over the empty back page. A curious contraption is nested on the left. A series of blue crystals, three of which have patterns etched into their surfaces, rests in separated compartments to the right. 

The green string is attached to the second of the crystals. Elio inserts the crystal into the contraption per instruction and places the setup on the desk. With a heavy stream of soul energy, the contraption’s aperture flashes. 

The room lights up in blue.

His father. His father, a body made up of photons projected onto crystal dust, fidgets awkwardly in front of the desk with a potted plant in his hands. Elio breathes in sharply (hacks, coughs). The man looks a little different. A little more like Elio remembers from his childhood—hair loose, robes simple. He reaches out with his hands and his fingers pass through the image.

It’s like his mother. A ghost imbued in a feather. Untouchable.

And then a sound cracks from the contraption and shocks Elio straight out of his thoughts.

_“Morris, is this some kind of prank?”_

Elio stares, wide-eyed at the image. That was his father’s _voice._ This projection has some sort of accompanying sound recording.

A second, less familiar voice, begins to subdue its chuckles. This, Elio figures, has to be Professor Dietrich, probably standing where he stands now.

_“I don’t do pranks, Charle. They’re a waste of my talents.”_

_“Then what’s this? Why are you using the crystal projector? Is this blackmail? What’s wrong with this plant, Morris!”_

_“Stop being so melodramatic, you monkey. There’s nothing wrong with the plant. In fact, it’s probably the only plant you can manage to keep without killing.”_

_“Har har. Yes, please continue mocking my black thumb. It gets more and more amusing every time.”_

It’s whiplash, being pulled straight out of ash and into this...strange world of banter and camaraderie. _They were close,_ Elio realizes. The contraption had been a gift from his father to Professor Dietrich, and the orchid had been a gift from the Professor to his father.

(And he _killed_ it.)

Elio shakes his head (coughs, heaves, his diaphragm aches, his chest hurts, his throat stings, his vision wavers) and continues to supply the torrent of soul energy necessary to operate the contraption. It’s the only connection the Professor made to the symbol on the orchid. He has to see this through, if there’s even a sliver of a chance—

_“You’re impertinent. Shut up.”_

_“Yes, Professor.”_

_“I—You—Okay, look. I’m about to grace you with my genius, so you’d better listen up.”_

_“Yes, Professor.”_

A sigh.

_“First of all, I’m gonna establish the following: this is my return gift to you, alright? We’re even now. I don’t owe you anything.”_

_“Of course. You never owed me anything—”_

_“Good. Now I’ll explain my gift to you in simple terms so that you can understand. This is a specimen of Orchidaceae, or common orchid, that has undergone biosuspension. This means that its lifespan is practically infinite and it doesn’t require classic care to stay alive. Repeat after me: ‘this orchid won’t die from my usual stupidity.’”_

_“Very funny.”_

_“Up! Say it!”_

_“...This orchid won’t die from my usual stupidity.”_

_“Good.”_

He’s baffled, hearing these two ghosts converse, the spectre of his father emoting with such unrestrained and uncharacteristic sass. Elio doesn’t know how to react.

 _“However, I manipulated my patented biosuspension array with some neuro-runological wizardry—I’ll spare your pea brain the details—so that it_ will _die under certain conditions. Namely, it’ll begin to die the moment you start up with your depression bullshit again.”_

_“What?!”_

_“You heard me.”_

_“Morris, I can’t control that!”_

_“Yeah, so that’s why you gotta get some goddamn help when you feel it coming before the orchid_ fucking dies. _”_

_“What? That’s—That’s ridiculous! What kind of gift is this?!”_

_“A very thought-out one. So you’d better take care of it.”_

_“Yeah, sure, it can’t die if I don’t ‘start up with my depression bullshit’ around it, so I guess I just won’t keep it.”_

_“Ha! Ten steps ahead of you! I hooked it onto your specific soul energy signature, so it’ll die anyways if you try to get rid of it.”_

Silence. The projection of Elio’s father is open-mouthed and staring.

_“What.”_

_“What do you mean what?”_

_“Morris, I can’t begin to—I cannot fathom why—What. What is this?”_

A sigh.

_“Do I need to spell it out for you?”_

_“Yes. You do. Because right now, this sounds like some kind of elaborate joke.”_

_“It’s not—Look. I just gave you a gift. You need to take care of it, because that’s just who you are, you idiot; you need to take care of things. But you can’t take care of this without taking care of yourself first. Do you get it yet?”_

_“No, Professor, I don’t.”_

_“I hate you. I hate you. You’re the dumbest smart person I know. I thought I could get away with some modicum of_ subtlety _, but apparently I_ can’t _—Alright, Charle. We’ll do it your way.”_

_“Please.”_

_“I’m_ telling you _to take care of yourself.”_

_“...”_

_“...What?”_

_“Morris, that is bar none the most convoluted way you could have articulated your point.”_

_“Maybe to you it is.”_

_“You...Despite it all, I think I’m touched, Morris.”_

_“Yeah, sure, whatever. Just...listen and take care of yourself, okay?”_

_“Of course.”_

_“Say it. ‘I’ll take care of myself.’”_

_“You’re a menace.”_

**_“Say it.”_ **

_“...I’ll take care of myself.”_

_“Good.”_

_“...Morris?”_

_“Yeah?”_

Elio watches a smile bloom across his father’s projected face.

_“You should too.”_

_“...Huh?”_

His father’s image lifts the potted orchid up just slightly and walks closer to the projector. Closer. Close enough for Elio to touch, close enough to see the way the man’s grin crinkles the edges of his eyes, close enough to feel the unadulterated fondness radiating from his expression.

_“Please take care of yourself.”_

Elio’s focus lapses (he coughs, hurts, heaves). The projection freezes.

He knows. He knows his father isn’t solid here. He knows his father isn’t looking at or speaking to him, but those fond eyes are pointed directly at him, those words soft and genuine, and Elio thinks of slow days as a child, hauling sofa cushions into the study. And his father, chuckling affectionately from the very spot Elio stands. Something lost years ago, something out of—

_I leave to you—_

_my deepest affections_

_you are my greatest pride and joy_

_(“Please take care of yourself.”)_

The image feels tantalizingly close in that moment.

_I leave to you—_

_(“—your specific soul energy signature—”)_

_(“I’m telling you to—”)_

_my orchid_

_(“Please—”)_

_Please take care of my orchid._

_(“—take care of yourself.”)_

  
  
  


_(Please take care of yourself after my passing.)_

The epiphany rises from his gut like a shot of soul energy: sudden and warm. And Elio glances from the plant alive and well in the spectre’s arms to the desolated clay pot on the desk. 

The orchid is dead. 

The orchid is dead, yes, but the message. The intentions. They’re the same.

_Love,_

_Your Father,_

_Charle_

Warmth, rising to his chest, to his heart. He takes the orchid pot into his arms, holds the container, filled with magic and arrays and awkward yet sincere affection, in his hands. He faces the frozen projection of his smiling father.

There’s nobody in the room, really, but that’s fine. His father might have already died, but it still needs to be said, amidst the mourning, and the anger, and the numbness.

Elio, biting back the few tears he has left in him, grins faintly back at the man.

“Thank you, father,” he says.

_Thank you._

* * *

That night, Elio takes his time flushing the ash from his lungs and engulfs his chest with rune magic to heal the tissue. He leaves the windows open. Changes out of his filthy clothes and takes a shower.

Before climbing into bed, early for once in many weeks, he takes a deep and unimpeded breath of the air outside the window.

* * *

(Nestled in the soil, silently crawling toward the sun, something is growing.)


End file.
